Two US Soldiers Shot Dead in Attack by Afghan Police Officer

Two U.S. soldiers serving with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force were shot dead Monday by an Afghan police officer in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.

The police officer positioned himself in the back of a police pickup truck and opened fire on Americans with a machine gun, killing two U.S. troops, said Abdul Razaq Quraishi, a deputy police chief of Wardak province in a phone interview. Three Afghan policemen, including the assailant, were shot and killed by U.S. troops in response, he said.

The incident, the second so-called green-on-blue attack in four days, took place on a joint Afghan-U.S military base in Jalrez district of the key province, neighboring the Afghan capital Kabul. In the earlier incident, individuals wearing Afghan National Army uniforms turned their weapons against U.S. troops, killing an American civilian contractor and wounding several troops in same region.

ISAF confirmed the insider attack in an emailed statement today, saying two U.S. soldiers were shot dead by an individual wearing an Afghan National Security Force uniform. Afghan and U.S. military officials are investigating the incident to find out if the Taliban had a connection to the attack, according to Quraishi and ISAF.

The attack took place a day after the expiration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s order for U.S. special forces troops to leave the province in two weeks. The order was issued after investigators said they found Afghans working with the troops were torturing and murdering fellow citizens.